Creative anxiety, self-doubt, and procrastination with Fredrik Backman

Summary

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Podcast Summary: ReThinking with Adam Grant

Episode: Creative anxiety, self-doubt, and procrastination with Fredrik Backman
Date: June 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this deeply candid and witty conversation, organizational psychologist Adam Grant sits down with bestselling Swedish author Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove, Anxious People, My Friends) to explore the tangled web of creative anxiety, persistent self-doubt, and the role procrastination plays in the creative process. Backman offers unguarded reflections on how his personal struggles manifest not only in his writing but also in his relationships, and how—even with global acclaim—he still grapples daily with feelings of inadequacy and existential worry. The episode is a rare, vulnerable peek into the mind of a major literary voice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Weight of Expectations and Self-Doubt

• Origins of Doubt: Backman has never felt confident, not even at the height of his success.
  • "I don't remember a time in my life when I didn't have a crisis of confidence." (06:10, Fredrik Backman)
• Success amplifies rather than resolves doubt—although he’s sold millions of books, he still anticipates failure with every project.
  • “There's a point where I am convinced that my career is over and this is the end of it, where I’m convinced by it. She’s like, it’s not an act…It happens at least once every book.” (07:03, Fredrik Backman)

2. Scandinavian Humility and the Law of Jante

• Social Context: Both discuss how Nordic culture’s ethos of humility (“the law of Jante”) shapes confidence, both positively and as a barrier.
  • "I think it's good to be reminded not to let things go to your head." (05:09, Fredrik Backman)

3. Creative Anxiety & Procrastination as Tools, Not Flaws

• Anxiety as Fuel: Fredrik sees anxiety as what drives him to improve—multiple rounds of editing spring from his worry.
  • "It’s the anxiety that makes you go back and edit three extra times… makes you question everything… makes you evolve all the time, that you never settle." (16:28, Fredrik Backman)
• Reframing Procrastination: He views procrastination as evidence he hasn’t given up.
  • “Even if you’re walking circles around your computer, you’re still at the computer… As long as you’re procrastinating, you haven’t given up yet.” (18:57, Fredrik Backman)
  • Adam connects this to research showing “moderate procrastinators” are often more creative due to increased incubation time for ideas. (17:53, Adam Grant)

4. Valuing Effort Over Outcome

• Self-Compassion as a Necessity: Both discuss the critical difference between judging oneself by outcome versus effort. Backman actively tries to focus on the latter.
  • “That’s the way that I battle anxiety now...to value effort and not outcome.” (20:34, Fredrik Backman)
  • Adam expands: “…value my effort daily, and [value] the outcome on a monthly or yearly basis.” (22:32, Adam Grant)
• Parental Wisdom: This lesson isn’t just about writing; it’s how Fredrik approaches parenting and self-worth.

5. Therapeutic Insights and the Myth of Happiness

• Working on Self-Liking: Backman describes how disliking himself harms his family, and how working towards self-acceptance is an act of care—not just for himself, but for his spouse and children.
  • “If I don’t work on liking myself, then that is selfish because...I’m going to be a really crappy husband and a really crappy father.” (27:10, Fredrik Backman)
• “Aim to Be OK, Not Happy”: Backman recalls a turning-point therapy conversation:
  • “One of the most useful things that a therapist told me was, ‘Do you need to be happy? ...I think you should aim to be okay.’” (28:15, Fredrik Backman)
  • He frames daily reflection as “was I okay today? Did I do my best today?”

6. Autobiography in Fiction

• Personal Experience in Storytelling: Backman acknowledges that his writing is deeply autobiographical, especially in his newest novel My Friends.
  • “There’s a lot of really autobiographical stuff and I think it’s in all my books, but I think it’s maybe more of me in My Friends than in any other book.” (25:51, Fredrik Backman)

7. The Double-Edged Sword of Introspection

• Narcissism & Healing: Fredrik confronts the paradox that writing (and therapy) can increase self-absorption, which he actively tries to mitigate for the sake of those around him.
  • “If you have narcissistic tendencies and you also struggle with anxiety, it’s either hubris or the abyss.” (33:33, Fredrik Backman)

8. Parenting, Relationships, and Growth

• Repair and Presence: Backman and his kids have learned to recognize and appreciate “trying”—focusing on visible effort, expressing gratitude for intentions, and reminding each other of mutual love.
  • “We can be frustrated, but I can turn around and say, ‘Hey, I see that you’re trying.’ And they turn around and go like, ‘I see that you’re trying, too.’” (37:54, Fredrik Backman)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Procrastination and Writing:

  • “I don’t have creative anxiety. I never get writer’s block. And the secret is easy. It’s procrastination. I don’t want to brag, but I’m very good at procrastination. I’m going to have a writer’s block. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.” (03:03, Fredrik Backman, excerpting his famous speech)

• On Holding On:

  • “I think it’s how I view my entire life. It’s just. I’m just barely hanging on. I feel that way as a parent, and I feel that way as a writer, and I feel that way as a friend.” (20:34, Fredrik Backman)

• On Grief and Ritual:

  • “I learned that it was good for me to schedule grief… Every night, I would sit there building Legos…telling myself that it’s okay to feel it now…” (42:59, Fredrik Backman)

• Adam’s Reflection:

  • “For a guy who thinks he’s just a moron stumbling around in the dark, you invented a hell of a flashlight.” (31:22, Adam Grant)

• On Living the “Best Mess”:

  • “Did I miss my deadline? Yes, I did. And do I have anything to send for them? No, I don’t. Am I even writing the book that I told them that I was going to write? No…But did you do your best? Yeah, I did my best. And this is what it is.” (31:03, Fredrik Backman)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:32 – Backman on making the most of his potential and feeling unprepared for success
• 03:03 – Humorous take on procrastination and creative anxiety; his famous speech anecdote
• 07:03 – Recurring crisis of confidence with every book (“darkness” in the process)
• 14:42 – In-depth discussion of his creative anxiety, the role of hard work, and chaos in writing
• 18:57 – Incubation, procrastination, and the creative process
• 20:34 – The effort-over-outcome approach to handling anxiety (applied to life and writing)
• 25:51 – Backman opens up about autobiographical writing and struggles with self-liking
• 28:15 – The therapeutic lesson: “Aim to be okay, not happy”
• 32:46 – The risks of excessive introspection, happiness vs. meaning, and relational well-being
• 37:54 – Reparative family dialogues: “I see that you’re trying”
• 41:28 – Lightning round: worst writing advice, opinions on video games, and processing grief
• 44:30 – Adam on happiness as balancing self-acceptance and self-improvement
• 46:11 – Discussion on the responsibility of success and whether it can hinder happiness
• 48:39 – Adam’s admiration for Backman’s radical honesty and “self-verification” over “self-enhancement”

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The Episode’s Tone & Takeaways

• Raw, Relatable, and Self-Deprecating: Backman’s unfiltered honesty, humor, and willingness to expose his vulnerabilities shaped a refreshingly non-performative conversation.
• Actionable Wisdom: Listeners are encouraged to value their effort, make peace with “being okay” rather than obsessing over happiness, and see the invisible work of thinking and incubating ideas as foundational to creativity.
• Reassurance for Creatives: The episode normalizes anxiety and self-doubt—offering comfort that these are as much part of creative achievement as ambition and output.

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Final Reflection

This episode offers far more than writing advice—it’s about living with the persistent churn of self-doubt, enduring the messiness of creative life, valuing imperfect effort over perfect outcomes, and finding a path to “okayness” that makes full happiness occasionally possible, especially when shared with others. Adam Grant and Fredrik Backman deliver a memorable, deeply empathetic dialogue—one that will resonate with anyone who has ever doubted their talent, lagged on a deadline, or worried if they were enough.

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Transcript

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[Fredrik Backman]

A friend of mine said to me, don't take it as an insult, but the thing that you have done better than anyone that I know is you have made the most of your potential. Like, yeah, he could be saying that I had very little potential to begin with, but he said, no, but you have. And I. I get what he meant. I agree. I got a little bit further than I should have based on my potential and I don't have the necessary talents to deal with it, like dealing with success, and I just haven't found my footing in that.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with

[Adam Grant]

Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

[Fredrik Backman]

Good evening. My name is Fredrik Backman.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I first learned of Fredrik Backman from a speech he gave in an event for his publisher.

[Fredrik Backman]

I'm here tonight because my agent said that this would be good for my career, she said I need to learn how to speak in front of people. It will be fun, she said. So I told her that I write books. I spend eight hours every day locked inside a room with people I have made up. If I was comfortable talking to real people, I would have a real job.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I was struck by both the heaviness and the humor of what he said in that speech.

[Fredrik Backman]

Being a writer is the best way I know how to get paid for being insane. My brain and I, we are not friends. My brain and I, we are classmates doing a group assignment called Life, and it's not going great. So my agent, she said, maybe you can talk about how you suffer from creative anxiety. Frederick. But I don't have creative anxiety. I never get writer's block. And the secret is easy. It's procrastination. I don't want to brag, but I'm very good at procrastination. I'm going to have a writer's block. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Frederick's first book, A Man Called Ove, was published in Sweden in 2012, and then the US a year later, where it hit the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a film starring Tom Hanks. Frederick has written 11 books, including eight novels. His latest novel is called My Friends. But he's still very much sorting through

[Adam Grant]

what to do with his success.

[Fredrik Backman]

Most people have a cruising altitude where you're comfortable and I'm just a little bit higher than my preferred cruising altitude would be.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

This conversation was unlike any other we published on this show in a way that I really loved. For starters, from the moment we began talking, Frederick was as unguarded as anyone I've ever spoken with.

[Fredrik Backman]

I don't do a lot of interviews, and I never know what people expect of me, and I never know why the hell people invite me to stuff. But I'll do what I can.

[Adam Grant]

I've got a few reasons, lots of things I'm excited to talk about. Is there anything you're hoping to either avoid or dive into?

[Fredrik Backman]

No. I mean, I avoid everything and dive into nothing. It's my policy in life.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I suspected some of Frederick's humility was the result of the law of Yante, which is a Scandinavian social code that says no one is better than anyone else. But as we talked, I realized it was much deeper than that, and this quality led to a fascinating conversation.

[Adam Grant]

Would you say you're a beneficiary or a victim of the law of Yante?

[Fredrik Backman]

I mean, we use it like, we make fun of ourselves a lot in Scandinavia, and we use that as kind of like explaining the Scandinavian mentality or Swedish mentality. You know, don't be too full of yourself, or don't think too highly about yourself, or don't walk around thinking that you're something. I think it's good to be reminded to not let things go to your head.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. I would say that ethos of humility is one of my favorite things about spending time in Scandinavia. At the same time, I've often heard from people that it can sort of stand in the way of confidence a little bit. Self confidence in particular. And I understand that that's been a bit of a challenge for you as a writer, which is ironic given how widely acclaimed your work has been. I know My Friends has sold over a million copies and you've built quite an audience. So how in the world do you experience a crisis of confidence in the very moment when you're achieving your biggest success?

[Fredrik Backman]

I mean, I've always had a crisis of confidence.

I don't remember a time in my

life when I didn't have a crisis of confidence. And I don't think that's anyone's fault. Like, I can't blame the law of Yante for that. I deal very poorly with expectations. I do good with people who have no expectations of me. I can exceed no expectations, but everything else is a struggle for me. And it's always been like that. And I think at this point it's probably never going to change. I don't think I'll ever be in a situation where I feel, oh, I know how to do this now. It's always like, I start a new book. It's always just free fall. My wife will tell you that during the writing of each book, there's a point where I am convinced that my career is over and this is the end of it, where I'm convinced by it. She's like, it's not an act.

It's not.

It's an actual thing. It happens at least once every book where for a couple of weeks, there's just darkness. And I don't know why and I don't know how to fix it. I would love to. I would love to fix it, but it's just. It's just there every time. That's just how it works.

[Adam Grant]

And yet you keep doing it.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Why?

[Fredrik Backman]

I don't know. I don't know. I. I honestly, I. You know, it was a psychological thing. I get too obsessed with everything within the story. That I'm trying to create. Because there's also this whole thing, if I'm not a writer, I don't know who I am. I don't have any hobbies. Like, I don't know what I would be instead of this. So I kind of had to tell myself I could not be this and still be fine. But, I mean, after I wrote my friends, I retired. And my wife still says that that was the most relaxed and happy I've seen you in years. And I felt 100% ready to leave it. And I'm still 100% ready to leave it. Now I've written something, so now I've sent a new book to my publisher, and we'll see how that goes. But people ask me all the time, when did you know that you wanted to be a writer? And I said, I still don't know if I want to be a writer. I'm still not there. I don't know.

[Adam Grant]

Wow.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

So why did you start?

[Adam Grant]

If I remember correctly, you were driving a forklift when you started writing.

[Fredrik Backman]

I mean, I dropped out of university, and then my best friend gave me a job as a forklift driver. He's given, like, wherever he has worked, he has always given me a job. So he worked at a restaurant, so I worked at a restaurant. So he worked at a warehouse, I worked at a warehouse. Like, every. He has to give me jobs. And I drove a fork Berkeley for a while because I just had this idea that, you know, I'll try to write something, like, for magazines. And then I became a freelancer. And then after a few years, I had this idea to maybe try to write a novel. And then that became my first novel. But it's just I really enjoy writing. I really enjoy, like, storytelling is the one thing that I really, really enjoy. It's the only thing, other than, you know, my wife and my kids that I've ever truly loved and been obsessed with. I just love stories, and I always loved stories. That was the vehicle to escape. When I was a kid, you know, I didn't have a lot of friends. I was very socially awkward. So stories was my way of escaping everything. It was books and it was sports that I could use as a vehicle to escape reality.

[Adam Grant]

That sounds very familiar.

[Fredrik Backman]

And I'm still like that. I don't care for reality very much. I like stories, so that's why I still do it. It's just that, like, I was on a book tour and someone asked me, like, isn't this great being on stage? I'm like, yeah, Yeah, I just wish that it was a smaller room.

[Adam Grant]

Well, it does make sense. Although I think if that's true, you're dramatically underestimating your skills as a speaker. Because I first became aware of you not through reading your work, but rather through watching a speech you gave. I think it was at Simon and Schuster. Yeah, I laughed so hard watching that speech.

[Fredrik Backman]

You know, it helps that my wife doesn't always tell me where I'm going and what I'm doing. So she had dramatically undersold what I was gonna do. So I thought I was giving like, you're American publisher, where you've been your entire career, whom you owe a great debt. Debt of gratitude, wants you to come and give a speech. They're celebrating 100 years. And I thought it was a speech at a dinner and it was a speech at a theater. And Jerry Seinfeld was there, like proper people, like Judy Blume was there. And it was just this insane collection of authors and people that I look up to immensely. And the seconds before I walk out on stage, I was standing just outside of the stage just feeling, well, this is what a heart attack feels like. This has to be it. Like, I can't feel my arms. So that was just fueled by pure panic.

[Adam Grant]

Was the whole thing written or improvised or a mix of the two?

[Fredrik Backman]

No, no, no, it was written. I also had to insist because they wanted to put it on the teleprompter. And I was like, no, I. I have it written down. I need the paper. And they were like, but we'll put it on the teleprompter for you. I'm like, I have to explain to like holding on to a life raft on the open sea. This is what I hold on to so I don't die. If you take this piece of paper from me, then this is not going to work.

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[Adam Grant]

Well, I was fascinated by the way that you framed creative anxiety and procrastination. And I know you only had four minutes in that speech, but I wanted to go deeper on those themes. Talk to me about how you experience creative anxiety and what causes you to procrastinate.

[Fredrik Backman]

I mean, in a constant state of creative anxiety. Because I know that some critics who don't like my work very much wouldn't believe it. But I work very, very hard. Like it takes a lot for me to do the things that I do. Like when I write something, I've given it my very best. Even though you know Some critics think that it still sucks. I'm like, yeah, it might suck, but I gave it all I had. Like, it took out of me to write this. So I'm always in a state of. I'm struggling, I'm struggling, I'm struggling, I'm struggling. Like, the. The process is chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos book. And then when I hold the book, like, I have no idea how this happened. I don't know how I climbed out of that hole. I. I have no idea how I, you know, got it all together somehow. But I'm trying to accept that it will never go away, if that makes sense. I think I always had this idea that I will get to a point where I feel that I know what I'm doing. Like, I will eventually just wake up one day and have it all figured out, and I will be more sure of myself, and I won't question myself as badly, and I'll just be good. I'll just arrive. And I've tried to accept that that will never happen and that this is the state that I'm in, and it's going to be that way. Like, you can be on the bestseller list and you can get awards and it doesn't matter. Like, that's not how confidence works. It's not how anxiety works. So I'm still there, but I've tried to make a friend out of it. I try to accept that. It's the anxiety that makes you go back and edit three extra times.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah.

[Fredrik Backman]

It's the anxiety that makes you try harder. It's the anxiety that makes you question everything. It's the anxiety that makes you evolve all the time, that you never settle. You try to be better all the time. And I think with the procrastination, I think I've just tried to learn how to be productive even when I'm procrastinating, if that makes sense. Like, I don't feel I'm gonna get any writing done today, but maybe I can edit or maybe I can do research. Maybe I can just Google a lot of things today. Or maybe I can just sit by the computer and read. And maybe if I read something really good, then maybe I'll get an idea and I start writing. And I also try to teach myself that doing the writing is, like. You tend to not take the thinking part into consideration. Like, everyone asks you if you have a writing routine. And I say, I don't have a writing routine, but I have a thinking routine. There's a morning routine. I drop my kids off at school, and then. And I drive to my office and I think and I walk the forest with my dog and I think, like, okay, now I'm just gonna think about the writing. I'm not gonna think about anything else. And that's my routine. And then some days I write and some days I don't, but I always think. So I'm always, like, writing the story in my head, if that makes sense.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, there's so much to react to here. Well, first of all, I think it was Aaron Sorkin who said, you call it procrastinating, I call it thinking. And I have found in some of my research that there is truth to that. Jihe Shin and I published some studies showing that people who procrastinate moderately tend to be more creative than people who procrastinate a lot, but also than people who procrastinate a little. Because some degree of delay, even though it might be uncomfortable or stressful or

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

anxiety inducing or maybe even guilt inducing, some degree of delay forces you to incubate.

[Adam Grant]

It prevents you from rushing ahead with your first idea and allows you to wait for your best idea. It makes it possible to maybe reframe the problem and access more remote, kind of unexpected directions for a storyline or more novel possibilities for an idea. And I'm so curious to hear about. Is that your experience? Do you find that some of the procrastinating actually leads you to new ideas and more exciting directions?

[Fredrik Backman]

I think it sounds really good, so I'm going to take it. But, yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Like, for me, everything that I write down, I have to think first. I have to think and think and think and think and think and think and think before I have something that I can put down on paper. And I think the procrastinating sometimes is even if you're walking circles around your computer, you're still at the computer like you haven't given up. As long as you're procrastinating, you haven't given up yet. Ooh.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, that's a frame I have not heard before. You know, Frederick, I like that because I think when I first started sharing the research we did, we studied people trying to do creative work in their jobs. We did experiments where we tempted them to procrastinate to different degrees. And we kept finding there's this sweet spot where you do want to procrastinate a little. I then started saying, well, you know,

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

we should all procrastinate maybe a little. Maybe a little more.

[Adam Grant]

And I got so much pushback from people on that, saying, procrastination is already the bane of my existence.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I do not need to procrastinate more.

[Adam Grant]

And all of a sudden, it hit me. I'm positioning this wrong. This is not about motivating people to procrastinate.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

It's about normalizing the procrastination they already

[Adam Grant]

do and saying this is actually sometimes

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

a necessary part of the creative process.

[Adam Grant]

Even though the postponing and the delay might be unintentional, you wish you could avoid it. Sometimes you actually derive unexpected benefits from it.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I never thought of the possibility that

[Adam Grant]

you could frame that. Just as you know what this means, I am still at it. I haven't quit yet. And that counts for something.

[Fredrik Backman]

I think it's how I view my entire life. It's just. I'm just barely hanging on. I. I feel that way as a parent, and I feel that way as a writer, and I feel that way as a friend. But I view. I think I view the procrastinating and the walking circus around your computer the same way as I do when I talk to my kids. Like, a lot of the argument between me and my children ends up with them or me saying, hey, I'm doing the best I can. I'm still here. I'm just hanging on. And it's. I'm trying to. That's the way that I battle anxiety now. That's been the most useful technique for me. It's to value effort and not outcome. Like, what I do then is the same thing that I do when I struggle with writing now, when I. I feel like everything I. I'm doing is really bad, and I don't know how to make this story. I don't know how to put what is in my head on paper. It feels like I'm failing. And I try to tell myself, like, hey, did you. Did you do your best today? Did you give this your best? Yeah, I did. Like, I just didn't have more in me today than this, but I did the best I could. And I think that's how I frame it now, or try to.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, no, that. That makes a lot of sense. I found myself thinking of a couple things as you articulate this. The first is my diving coach sent me a meme one day that I loved. It just said, you are not a machine. Your best looks different every day. And I realized that for most of my life, I have been grading my work every day based on my best ever. And I should know better. As a psychologist, I should know that when you hit a personal best Running, for example, or lifting. You're not just going to exceed that every single day. And yet I've carried around this implicit

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

expectation that I will.

[Adam Grant]

I made the mistake of valuing the outcome every day, and I want to make sure I value the effort daily, but I don't want to lose the outcome. I just need to stretch it into a larger time horizon. So I want to value my effort daily, and I want to value the outcome on a monthly or yearly basis and say, okay, if I put in my best every day, whatever that best is, if I zoom out enough, it's going to add up to something of value.

[Fredrik Backman]

And I think I try to not value the outcome at all. No, I really, really. I try to make it smaller. I try to make my world smaller. I'm just going to do the thing that's in front of me now. And I know it sounds incredibly ungrateful, but I have a really hard time with trying to take in what people actually think about the writing I've done. So I kind of steer away from it, especially when I'm writing something else, because the only thing that happens when people tell me that something was great is that I immediately go to, oh, you're not gonna like the next thing I'm doing, because I'm not gonna be able to do that again. Like, I'm not gonna be able to replicate it. And that's kind of how I've worked.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, from everything you've said so far, psychologists would probably describe you as a.

[Fredrik Backman]

As a moron and a maniac.

[Adam Grant]

No, neither. I think your self portrait would fit with what Julie Noram called defensive pessimism, as opposed to strategic optimism, where you. You basically anticipate the worst scenario constantly, and then you try to harness your anxiety as motivation.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, I went to a little bit of therapy. Obviously, I've needed some therapy in my life. My therapist has a very nice little house by the lake and a boat, and he's done good business on me, been lucrative. And he said at one point, he said, I think the problem for you is that the thing that made people respond to your books is you diving into the parts of you that if you had any other line of work, we would tell you, like, you need to think about those things less. And he said, you managed to manufacture a career where whenever someone says, like, you should do less of this, or you should really work on these parts of yourself, but you find a way to defend yourself with, yeah, but all of those. I need all of those things, like, I can't fix my anxiety. That's how I make a living. Does that make sense?

[Adam Grant]

It does.

[Fredrik Backman]

I understand now that I use it as a defense mechanism that I have to like work on these things. But it takes time. It's a lot of work.

[Adam Grant]

Well, it does. I mean, it does make sense. I mean, you just answered actually two of the questions I wanted to ask you about. There were a couple lines in My Friends that really stuck with me and they seem to be very self descriptive now as I, you know, as I hear you talk about yourself. So I'll just read them to you. One was you wrote, he was good at seeing beauty in everything that happens. If you're no good at seeing it in yourself, like, oh yeah, that that might be something you have lived. And then the other one is it's a lie that people are scared of being alone because what we fear is being abandoned. You can choose to be alone, but no one chooses to be left.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

Were those both autobiographical statements?

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of really autobiographical stuff and I think it's in all my books, but I think it's maybe more of me in My Friends than in any other book. And it's, those two quotes are, I mean, I, I, I don't like myself very much and it's the thing that I work on the most. And it took me, you know, well into my adult years, way longer than it should have been that I understood that I have to work on liking myself a little more because I'm gonna see if I can explain this. You have to understand that English is not my first language and I don't even speak my first language very well.

[Adam Grant]

It's, well, you could have fooled me.

[Fredrik Backman]

It's when you have kids and you have a marriage. I came to the realization that it's if I don't work on liking myself, then that is selfish because if I don't find a place within me where I don't struggle so much with this self hate, then I'm going to be a really crappy husband and a really crappy father.

[Adam Grant]

Wow.

[Fredrik Backman]

Like, in order to be there for them, I have to do the work on me so that when I'm with them, I'm not consumed by all of my feelings about myself.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. I find it so difficult sometimes to convince people who are harder than themselves to build self compassion and show themselves a little more kindness and understanding and not constantly just berate themselves. And I think I've always tried to highlight the benefits to them and sometimes I'll even go into the research and say, look, there's this whole body of evidence spearheaded by Kristin Neff, that shows that you are happier, you're less depressed, you're less anxious.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I never thought to frame self compassion

[Adam Grant]

as something that actually benefits the people around you, that if you are a little bit kinder to yourself, you will be a better parent, better partner, better creator, better colleague. I'm gonna try this.

[Fredrik Backman]

It's the only thing that I eventually arrived at. It was this notion that I think a lot of people who struggle with depression, I would assume, feel disconnected from themselves. Like, you look in the mirror and it doesn't feel like you. Like, I don't know who this person is. I'm dragging this body around, but it doesn't feel like it belongs to me. And the person other people view me as, that doesn't feel as me. So what I try to do now is I try to not view it as like, oh, I'm gonna find a way so that I feel like myself. I try to find a way to say, okay, so there's this person that I'm dragging around. I'm gonna try to make peace with him. I'm gonna try to make our coexistence as good and healthy as I can. Because when I'm constantly struggling with myself, then I'm no good to other people, because then I get self absorbed. You get to this point where you can't take in what other people are saying or other people need. Like, if you're in a deep depression, it's very hard for you to feel empathy or sympathy or be a good listener or whatever. So I'm working on that. I'm working on framing it as if I do the work, it's not necessarily to make myself happy. I think I always had that goal before. I had this idea that one day I'm just going to wake up and I'm just going to be happy. And one of the most useful things that a therapist told me was, well, do you need to be happy? And it was the most insane thing that anyone had ever said to me. I was like, what are you talking about? Do you know how much you cost an hour? I'm like, why do you think I'm here? And he said, but do you need to be happy? And more than that, do you think that that's a reasonable expectation for you? And then he said, I think you should aim to be okay. And then if at the end of the day you ask yourself, like, instead of asking yourself, am I happy? Am I happy now? Am I happy enough? Like instead of doing that, just ask yourself, are you okay? Was this an okay day? Did you get through the day okay? When I'm really in a dark, when I, you know, descend into the real darkness and self doubt, I just tell myself, did you do your best? Today I did my best today. I still messed everything up, but I really did do my best.

[Adam Grant]

It was my best mess.

[Fredrik Backman]

This was my best mess. This was the best, best mess that I could do.

[Adam Grant]

It could have been even messier.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah. Did I miss my deadline? Yes, I did. And do I have anything to send for them? No, I don't. Am I even writing the book that I told them that I was going to write? No. Like I pitched something and they were all excited and then I started writing something else. But I'm. Did you do your best? Yeah, I did my best. And this is what it is.

[Adam Grant]

Frederick, I have to tell you that the disconnect between your self talk and the depth of your insight and wisdom is as big as I've ever seen. For a guy who thinks he's just a moron stumbling around in the dark, you invented a hell of a flashlight. And I think other people can see that. It's obviously a struggle for you to see that, but you have. I mean, you've anticipated a bunch of research findings that have been hugely influential in psychology and took a lot of data collection to discover. So one. I mean, one thing you reminded me of as you were talking is there's a paper by a pair of Finnish researchers, it was Salmela Arrow and Nurmi who showed that for a long time we just assumed that when people got depressed that made them self focused. So you start to feel down, you turn your attention inward, what's wrong with me? You start to ruminate and then you withdraw and you become sort of a less pleasant person to be around. As you were describing. They showed though that it also goes a little bit the other way, that if you spend too much time focusing inward trying to fix what's wrong with you, that that actually can start to precipitate depression because you end up sort of making yourself miserable and you feel like you're not worthy of being around other people and that can sink you deeper. And it sounds like you've experienced the causal arrow going in both of those directions.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, absolutely. I can relate a lot to that.

[Adam Grant]

The other one, which is just very closely connected to that. When you were talking about do I need to be happy? I was thinking about the research of Iris Mouse and colleagues who show that when people set happiness goals, they often become less happy, especially if they're from individualistic cultures, because they get into this, well, I need to work on my happiness, and I need to do what is going to bring me joy. And they forget that a great deal of being okay, as you put it, is having meaningful relationships with other people. And happiness is rarely. It rarely succeeds as a purely solitary pursuit. And it sounds like you've come around to that view as well, even though it's not your impulse.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, I mean, it's been a long way around before I kind of started to figure out that, you know, maybe I'm pursuing the wrong things and in the wrong way, and, you know, maybe my. My expectations are wrong. And also this idea that I think it was the most important thing that I'm trying to get through is the part where I have to make peace with myself. I think I'm an incredibly narcissistic person at the core of me. And I kind of had to identify that to fight it, to really, really stop being so focused on myself and my feelings all the time. Which is also. If you have narcissistic tendencies and you kind of fool yourself, but you also struggle with anxiety, it's either hubris or the abyss. There's only those two. And if you have that kind of a personality and you go into a line of work where it's encouraged that you sit alone in a room and really just dive into yourself, then I think that's a cocktail for a very, very selfish and not very nice person. I, like, try to be aware of all that so I can fight it.

[Adam Grant]

I respect that. I also have to say, if you're a narcissist, you are the most humble narcissist I've ever met.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, but I think you'll meet a lot of humble narcissists, and those are just those of us who kind of identified that. I think that's a bad part of me, and I think I have to fight it.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I've only known you for an hour, but you do a lot of torturing of yourself just for being human.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, but that's also kind of the job is to try to be better. I wrote a book called Anxious People, and I wrote it when I came out of being in a lot of therapy because I burned out. And when I came out of therapy, I didn't think I was going to be able to write anymore because I had had such a deep burnout. So I started writing this thing, this comedy about being in therapy, because I thought, this is going to be my writing exercise to see if I can write again. And that kind of grew and grew and grew and grew and, you know, turned into a novel. But there's a line in there, and I see if I can quote it in English. But I think the English quote is that we're taught that we're the sum of our experiences. But that's an unbearable thought, because we have to let ourselves believe that we're more than all of the things that we have done, that we are also all of the things that we will do. My identity is also all of my tomorrows. That's also me. Not just my experiences and the mistakes, also the things that I might be capable of tomorrow. That's how we. That's how we get through the day. That's how we get up in the morning that we're not done. I'm still here. I'm still hanging around. I might not be producing much, but I'm still here. I'm still around. You know, I'm still in the fight. And that's how I view it. That's how I view myself as a father. Like, my proudest achievement is that my wife is still married to me. We've been together for 19 years, married for 17. And my kids still like me. Like, my kids still want to go to the movies with me, and my kids still want to tell me about this video game that they're playing. And they're not terribly ashamed of me when I drop them off at school. These are my proudest achievements. And I tell my kids all the time that I know I messed a lot of things up. I know I wasn't the best father at all times. I know I was a lot in my head at times. You know, I, I missed things and I forgot things, and I, I, I didn't listen enough, and I didn't understand everything, and I made mistakes. Like, I know I, I know I messed up, but I'm trying. And I hope that you see that I'm trying. And it's this thing that we're pretty good at telling each other now. We kind of learned that as a technique, me and my kids, when we're in an argument or when we don't see eye to eye, it's like we have this thing where I can turn around and we can be mad at each other and we can, you know, we can be frustrated, but I can turn around and say, hey, I see that you're trying. And they turn around and they go like, I see that you're trying too, and there can be a lot of frustration. But it's like, I see you trying. I see you trying too. Good, Good. So, just to remind each other that we're still coming from a place of

[Adam Grant]

love here, I'm going to try that. I can see that you're trying.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I love that this episode is sponsored by the Amazon Kindle Scribe. Up until now, people have had to choose between the focus that comes from writing on paper and the efficiency of laptops and tablets, which might come at the cost of distracting pop ups and notifications. The Kindle Scribe's exciting new AI features are designed to streamline your workflow for maximum efficiency, but what's not on it is just as important. Scribe comes with no email, messaging or social apps, so you can unlock your best focus. Use Scribe's AI Notebook Insights to ask your notebook a question and instantly comb through handwritten notes for fast answers. Or pull up and Mark PDFs with PDF markup right on your screen. No printer necessary. The Kindle Scribe makes it easy to keep your notes organized with everything you need in one place without having to sort through paper files or type notes on your laptop. I love how the Kindle Scribe brings my notes to life while making them impossible to lose. I know what I'm working on moving forward.

[Adam Grant]

What are you working on?

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

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[Adam Grant]

okay Frederik, it's time for a lightning round. Are you ready?

[Fredrik Backman]

Sure.

[Adam Grant]

The first one is what is the worst writing advice you've ever gotten?

[Fredrik Backman]

Any advice that just tells you don't do this or never do this. You can do anything if you make it work.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, that's great. What is an unpopular opinion you hold that you're excited to defend?

[Fredrik Backman]

That I think in general, video games are good for kids.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, I'm with you there. We did a whole podcast on it.

[Fredrik Backman]

I felt that you would agree with me, but it's a very strong opinion that I have that in general, not all video games, not for all children, not at all times, but in general, I think video games are doing so much good.

[Adam Grant]

Such good qualifications on that too. Again, you anticipated the evidence so well. On average, they're great for teaching grit and resilience. They're actually surprisingly social as opposed to isolating, and it's how I learned to find flow as a kid. Also. Okay, what is something you've changed your mind about recently?

[Fredrik Backman]

I don't know how to answer it in one sentence, but it's someone I cared about a lot, passed away childhood friend of mine and I learned that it was good for me to schedule grief, which is a weird thing to say.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Not weird at all.

[Adam Grant]

I never thought about this with grief, but there's a whole body of research in psychology on the benefits of scheduling anxiety. Right? Setting aside worry time to contain it and have it not take over at all times. And it sounds like you found something similar helpful with grief.

[Fredrik Backman]

I did. And it was a childhood friend and he passed away and we hadn't spoken for a while and someone close to him reached out and said, you know, he had a gift for you, he bought something for you that he never got around to giving you. And it was Lego because he loved Lego. So it was the LEGO typewriter. Because I love typewriters. I collect old typewriters. So I spent the last week, building this LEGO typewriter for an hour every night, I would sit there building Legos. And sometimes I'm sitting there holding the pieces, looking at the picture for 20 minutes because my mind drifted. But it was like I scheduled grief so that I didn't break apart during the day, so that I didn't get overwhelmed with wow. With whatever emotions I was struggling with. And that was like telling myself that it's okay to feel it now. You know, go ahead, feel it now. And then we'll feel it for an hour and we'll build a little bit of Lego and I'll remember him. And then it was obvious when I was building it, like you're building it with him now.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. Frederick, I'm so sorry for your loss, first of all. And secondly, what a powerful way to grieve and also a beautiful way to honor your friend's memory. I have one final thing, which is little office hours moment. You have a question for me?

[Fredrik Backman]

I do. What is happiness?

[Adam Grant]

What is happiness? Oh, how do I do that? Lightning round style. Well, we talked about it a little bit earlier. I think you hit on what, for me, is the most powerful path to happiness, which is finding a way to make other people happier. And I also think, though, maybe I have another response to this that's informed by reflecting on what you've shared so far, which is, I think that. I think a big part of happiness is finding a healthy balance between self acceptance and self improvement.

[Fredrik Backman]

Oh, yeah, that's good.

[Adam Grant]

And you're very good at the second and terrible at the first, from what I can tell. I think that it's, for me, a big part of happiness because I've also been someone who just relentlessly strives to get better. And I guess one of the things I've learned is that happiness lies in trying to better my present self without hating my past self.

[Fredrik Backman]

That's very good. Trying to see how can I make this better without falling down the dark hole of how bad it was.

[Adam Grant]

Exactly, exactly. And it almost doesn't matter if it was bad or mediocre or good. I'm going to want to make it better regardless. And so I'm just going to spend less time wallowing in the evaluation of how it was and just try to move forward with, okay, what's the most important next step I can take to try to evolve?

[Fredrik Backman]

Can I ask you something?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, please.

[Fredrik Backman]

Do you think there will ever be a point where you feel that your success, this incredible success. Does the responsibility get overwhelming for you?

[Adam Grant]

I feel like I Got really lucky that a door opened and then there were a bunch of additional doors on the other side of it. And I feel a responsibility to not waste the fact that I got to walk through those. And I feel especially responsibility to open the door for other people.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, that's good. You have a responsibility to open the door for someone else. That's very useful. Do you think that. Can I ask one, one last thing?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, Fire away.

[Fredrik Backman]

Do you think that you will ever be in a situation where you feel that your success is standing in the way of your happiness?

[Adam Grant]

Oh, I've definitely been there. I think I was there when I started getting asked to give speeches more often. And as a shy introvert, I was afraid of public speaking. And I decided that in those moments it was more important for me to face my fears than it was to feel happy. I'm glad I did that because now I actually love speaking most of the time. I think there are definitely. I mean, there's probably a good decade of my life where I traded, I'd say on a 0 to 10 scale, it would have been much easier to be at a 9 in happiness if I worked less. And I deliberately chose to be at a 7 or an 8 because I had projects that I found meaningful and things I wanted to get better at. And I said, I'm okay not being happy in these moments or not being as happy as I could be in these moments because meaning matters more to me than happiness. And I was okay with that trade off. But I wouldn't have wanted to pursue success and drop myself down to a 2 or 3 in happiness. And I don't think I would have found any happiness or any meaning if success were the main goal. I think it's always been, how do I create something that's worthwhile for other people? How do I gain the freedom to use my time in ways that are worthwhile for me? And if I can do those two things, I hope success and happiness are byproducts.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

Such interesting questions you ask.

[Fredrik Backman]

What was the thing you said? Meaning means more to me than happiness?

[Adam Grant]

It does.

[Fredrik Backman]

That's something to think about. There's a very good phrasing of that feeling. It's very, very good.

[Adam Grant]

Well, this has been fascinating. I think this is unlike any interview I've done before in that I can't find an ounce of impression management or self presentation concern in the way that you communicate at all. It's almost as if you don't care about being seen positively, you just want to be seen accurately. That's such a rare quality.

[Fredrik Backman]

No.

Thank you for saying that. That means a lot to me. You're saying that it's exactly like that.

[Adam Grant]

There's a whole literature in psychology on the tension that many people feel between self enhancement, like I want to look good and self verification. I want you to see the real me. And I didn't think it was possible for anyone to just be in full self verification mode and not at all in self enhancement mode. And you made me rethink that.

[Fredrik Backman]

Oh, thank you. I'm super grateful that you had me on.

[Adam Grant]

Thank you.

[Fredrik Backman]

Thank you so much.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standards. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hilesh, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong,

[Adam Grant]

and Whitney Pennington Rogers.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[Adam Grant]

When earlier you said I have no hobbies, I think you collect typewriters. I think you enjoy building Legos. It sounds like you also occasionally play video games. You've proven yourself wrong.

[Fredrik Backman]

Yeah, the video games part. It's with my kids. I enjoy watching my kids play video games. We don't have to talk. I'm just. You're doing something and I'm here too. And now I'm a part of.

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[Adam Grant]

hey,

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast Rethinking with Adam Grant. This episode is sponsored by the Amazon Kindle Scribe. Up until now, people have had to choose between the focus that comes from writing on paper and the efficiency of laptops and tablets, which might come at the cost of distracting pop ups and notifications. The Kindle Scribe's exciting new AI features are designed to streamline your workflow for maximum efficiency. But what's not on it is just as important. Scribe comes with no email, messaging or social apps, so you can unlock your best focus. Use Scribe's AI Notebook Insights to ask your notebook a question and instantly comb through handwritten notes for fast answers. Or pull up and Mark PDFs with PDF markup right on your screen. No printer necessary. The Kindle Scribe makes it easy to keep your notes organized with everything you need in one place without having to sort through paper files or type notes on your laptop. I love how the Kindle Scribe brings my notes to life while making them impossible to lose. I know what I'm working on moving forward. What are you working on?

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